Fact, Faith, Feelings: Trusting God’s Truth Over Your Feelings

Amen. You may be seated.

I’d like for us to open tonight to Matthew chapter 14. Let’s begin reading in verse 22:

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, while he sent the crowds away. After he had sent the crowds away, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray, and when it was evening, he was there alone.
But the boat was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves, for the wind was contrary.
In the fourth watch of the night, he came to them, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear.
But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.”
Peter said to him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
And he said, “Come.”
And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of him and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
When they got into the boat, the wind stopped. And those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “You are certainly God’s Son.”

Let’s pray once again.

Father, we come to you tonight in the name of your Son, the one in whom all the promises of God are yes and Amen. We pray for grace tonight, Lord, because of Jesus. We pray that you’d bring us on. Meet with us in this time. Teach us, Lord. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I’d like to speak to you tonight on the subject of feelings in the Christian life—the place of feelings in the Christian life.

Some time back, Charles shared a quote with me from Conrad Merle that I thought was very helpful, and it has stuck with me ever since. This is what Conrad said:

“If you don’t bring your thought life into captivity to what you know is true, you will live a wretched, miserable life.”

I want to submit to you this evening that the exact same thing is true with regards to your feelings. If you don’t bring your feelings into captivity to what you know is true, you will live a wretched, miserable, defeated life.

Many Christians are wretched and miserable precisely because they make their feelings the barometer of their spiritual life. You know how it goes: one morning, you wake up with a felt sense of God’s presence and love. You know He’s your Father, you’re His child, and there’s joy as a result. But the next morning, the feelings are gone. God seems distant, removed. There’s no felt sense of His presence, just emptiness. You go through the day depressed, wondering what went wrong.

But here’s the question: Did anything actually change about God from one day to the next? Was He suddenly less near to you? Was He less your Father? Did He love you any less? The answer, of course, is no. Those truths about God are objective facts. They are unchanging because of who you are in Christ. The only thing that changed was your feelings. God’s truth didn’t change. Reality didn’t change. Only your feelings changed.

When feelings replace faith in the facts, a roller coaster of spiritual highs and lows is inevitable. We see this clearly illustrated in the account of Peter walking on the water.

Look at verse 28. Peter says, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” Jesus responds with a single word: “Come.” Here, Peter has a clear command from the Lord, the Word of the Lord. He has Christ Himself before his eyes, the Lord of glory. These are objective facts, external to Peter—truths he can hold onto.

On the basis of those facts, Peter steps out in faith. Verse 29 says, “Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came toward Jesus.” Here’s the sequence:

1. Facts: Jesus is there, and He commands Peter to come.
2. Faith: Peter acts on those facts.
3. Feelings: While the text doesn’t mention Peter’s emotions explicitly, it’s reasonable to imagine that walking on water was exhilarating!

So, the pattern is fact, followed by faith, followed by feeling. This is important to emphasize because it gives us a picture of the victorious Christian life. This is a life ordered by God, directed by the Spirit:

• Eyes fixed on Christ,
• Walking in faith,
• And experiencing the feelings of joy and triumph as a fruit of faith.

However, look what happens next. In verse 30, Peter’s divinely ordered life—fact, faith, feeling—is reversed:

“But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!'”

Here, Peter takes his eyes off Christ. His feelings take over as he focuses on the wind and the waves. Fear overwhelms him. Instead of placing his faith in Christ’s person and command, Peter places his faith in his feelings of fear, which then become his ultimate reality.

Notice the shift in order:

1. Feelings: Peter sees the wind and is frightened.
2. Faith: His faith transfers from Christ to his fear.
3. Facts: His feelings now determine his perception of reality.

With the order reversed, Peter begins to sink.

What’s remarkable is that instead of cutting Peter some slack—after all, he did walk on water for a moment—Jesus rebukes him. In verse 31, Jesus says:

“You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Jesus is essentially saying, “Why did you allow your feelings to take over? Why did you lose faith in Me and My Word? Why did you place your faith in your feelings instead of Me?”

And isn’t this exactly our trouble? Too often, we allow feelings to lead our spiritual life. Instead of trusting the unchanging facts about God and walking by faith, we reverse the order. We let feelings dictate our faith, and as a result, they define our reality. But the Christian life is not meant to be driven by feelings. Feelings are the fruit, not the foundation. When the order is fact, faith, feeling, we walk in victory. When it’s reversed, we sink.

Many times, instead of taking our feelings captive to what we know is true—taking them captive to fact—we allow our feelings to reign over us. The result is misery and defeat. Instead of living in the divinely ordered mode of fact, faith, feeling, we reverse the order and live in a feelings-first mode. Feelings take precedence, followed by faith in those feelings, and finally, facts take a backseat. God’s truth is overshadowed by emotions, and we allow our feelings to dictate reality rather than letting God’s unchanging truth shape our understanding of reality.

Let me clarify something: emotions and feelings themselves are not the problem. God created us as emotional beings, setting us apart from the lower creation. Furthermore, God Himself is an emotional being. According to Scripture, God experiences pity, wrath, compassion, hatred, jealousy, grief, and joy. We see this reflected in the life of Christ, the perfect image of God. Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, grieved at people’s hardness of heart, and wept at the tomb of Lazarus.

If we are to imitate God’s character, we must also be emotional beings. There are things we ought to have strong feelings about: we should hate sin and falsehood, and we should love righteousness and truth. Feelings in themselves are not the problem.

The problem is sin.
The fall of Adam and Eve unleashed a poison into the bloodstream of humanity, corrupting every part of mankind, including our emotions. Consider this: across the world tonight, people laugh at things that should make them weep and cry over things they can’t even explain. Rather than ruling over their emotions, people are ruled by them. Feelings become tyrants. That is the state of every lost person.

Scripture highlights this enslavement to feelings:

• Titus 3:3: “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.”
  Notice that word—enslaved. Lost people are in bondage to their desires.
• Ephesians 2:1–3: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air… Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.”
  Here, Paul describes the natural state of man as one where feelings dominate. Desires and appetites rule.

The motto of the lost man is:
“If it feels good, do it.”
For example:

• If I feel hungry, I eat, even if it leads to obesity.
• If I feel sexual desire, I act on it, even if it destroys my marriage and family.
• If I feel angry, I murder, even if it means a lifetime in prison.

This pattern is everywhere. Mankind is enslaved to sin, and as a result, feelings rule over him like a tyrant.

Before the fall, mankind lived in the order of fact, faith, feeling.
God’s truth determined reality. But ever since the fall, mankind naturally lives in the reversed order of feeling, faith, fact. Feelings come first, and feelings determine truth.

Isn’t this evident in the culture around us? You hear phrases like:
“I’ve got to be me” or “I’ve got to follow my heart.” Translation? “I trust my feelings.” It’s natural in a fallen world, but when feelings determine facts, the result is bondage and misery.

This would be the state of every person forever if it weren’t for two of the most beautiful words in Scripture:
“But God.”

• Ephesians 2:4–6: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ… and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
  When God saves a person, He raises them out of their bondage to feelings. He restores them to live in the mode of fact, faith, feeling—eyes fixed on Christ, faith resting in Him, and emotions under the Spirit’s control.
• 2 Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
  Salvation is when God opens a person’s eyes to the greatest fact in the universe: the glory of God in the face of Christ. That fact becomes the center of their existence. Faith springs up, and feelings follow as the fruit of faith.

But the story doesn’t end there.
Even though the Christian is a new creation, they still live in a fallen world. The battle with sin, the world, and the devil begins when someone is saved. These forces are bent on stirring up feelings and desires contrary to the Spirit of God. They aim to make us forget who we are in Christ and live by faith in our feelings rather than faith in the facts.

The culture plays right into this.

• In advertising, emotions take center stage. Commercials are designed not to inform you about a product but to create an emotional response that makes you want to buy it.
• In counseling, the focus often shifts from facts to feelings: “How does that make you feel?” rather than “What actually happened?”
• In eating disorders, feelings override reality. A person feels fat when, in fact, they are dangerously thin.
• In sexuality, people often say, “I feel same-sex attraction, so it must define who I am.” Feelings take priority over truth.

When feelings dictate reality, the result is bondage and misery. But when God saves someone, He restores the proper order of living: fact, faith, feeling. As believers, we must resist the pull of the world and our flesh to reverse that order. We must live by the unchanging truth of God’s Word, trusting in Him and allowing feelings to take their rightful place as the fruit of a life fixed on Christ.

So we’re saturated in this worldly culture even as Christians all the time, saturated in this culture that’s constantly trying to stir up feelings and desires. And when those feelings come, as they always do in a fallen world, then the devil will come in and say, Look, if you were really a Christian, you wouldn’t be feeling like that. If you were really a Christian, you wouldn’t have desires like that.

And so basically, the devil will come in and call us a hypocrite, and then we feel even worse and get even more discouraged. And so I say again, if you don’t bring your feelings into captivity to what you know is true, you will live a wretched and miserable Christian life.

And so with the rest of our time, then, what I want us to think about is: How do we do this? How do we bring our feelings into captivity to what we know is true? And I want us to leave here this evening with at least a basic understanding of how I can do this in my day-to-day walk with the Lord. What does it mean? What does it look like?

Well, before we get to that specifically, I want to say two kind of introductory comments here, and this might help some of you more than anything else.

First of all, the fact that you experience feelings and desires that are contrary to the Spirit of God doesn’t mean that you aren’t a Christian. It’s an evidence that you are a Christian. Let me say that again: the fact that you experience feelings and desires contrary to the Spirit of God doesn’t mean that you aren’t a Christian. It’s an evidence that you are a Christian.

What do I mean? Turn to Galatians 5:16.

Paul says, But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.

In other words, the Bible itself tells us that as Christians, we can expect a battle related to the flesh of the unredeemed mortal body and the Holy Spirit. In our day-to-day lives, we can expect that there’s a battle being waged between our flesh and the Spirit of God.

And so when we have these desires, these feelings that are contrary to the Spirit, it’s not proof that we’re not Christians. It’s an evidence that we are Christians. You see this battle being waged.

A lost person doesn’t struggle with their sin. They might replace one sin for another, but they don’t struggle with their sin in the sense of having a desire for spiritual things and wanting to get rid of their sin for the glory of God. They don’t struggle with that. Sin fits them. They live in it. They love it. They drink it down like water. There’s no battle in the lost person.

In the Christian, there’s a struggle. There’s a battle against sin. It’s not an evidence that you’re not a Christian—it’s an evidence that you are a Christian, that this battle is taking place, and the Spirit will continue to wage that battle in your life and won’t let you go your own way.

So again, the fact that we experience feelings and desires contrary to the Spirit of God doesn’t mean that we aren’t Christians. It’s an evidence that we are Christians.

Same thing again in Romans chapter 6. Go ahead and turn there.

Romans 6:1: What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

Now notice what Paul says here. He doesn’t say, You shouldn’t live in sin anymore. He says, You can’t live in sin anymore.

How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man literally was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin to the flesh might be made powerless, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Now if we just stop there, we might think that Paul is presenting a pretty rose-colored view of the Christian life. Our old man was crucified. The body of sin has been made powerless. We’re dead to sin, alive to God. And now we just kind of reckon those things true, and we coast along.

But what’s the very next verse?

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its lusts. And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

You see, being dead to sin doesn’t mean that sin can’t bother us at all anymore. That’s not what it means. But it does mean that we don’t have to submit to it anymore. Sin no longer is our master.

It was at one time—you were slaves of sin. No more. Sin is no longer master over you. We don’t have to let sin reign anymore in our mortal bodies.

Before you’re a Christian, it reigns and rules over you, and you don’t have a choice about it. As a Christian, it no longer has to reign like that. Paul says, Don’t let it reign. It’s been broken. It’s not master over you anymore.

Don’t let it reign in your mortal body.

The point here, again, is that according to the Bible itself, true Christians can expect to experience daily battles with sinful thoughts, feelings, and desires. So don’t let the devil come in and tell you that such things mean you aren’t a Christian. It’s not true. The exact opposite is true.

It’s only because you are a new creation that such battles are being waged by the flesh and the Holy Spirit in your life to begin with. It’s an evidence that the Holy Spirit is at work.

Third, instead of giving in to the temptation to live based on his feelings, Jesus replaces feeling with fact. He refuses to allow himself to live in the feelings-faith-fact mode. He fights back with truth, and he puts facts squarely in the front by quoting Scripture.

And then fourthly, he doesn’t just fight back with fact, but he fights back with a fact that is directly related to the specific temptation that he was facing. He’s tempted—he’s hungry. He’s tempted to fulfill that feeling of hunger in an unbelieving way. And so the devil comes along and tempts him in that way.

And notice what he says right back in verse 4:
But he answered and said, “It is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”

In other words, Jesus is determined to live as a man. You see there, man does not live on bread alone. Jesus is saying that about himself: Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

In other words, he’s saying, No, Satan, I’m not going to draw upon my divine privileges, my divine power. I’m going to live as a man, trusting God to provide for my needs in His way and in His time.

And we see the same pattern here in the rest of the temptations that follow. Jesus wastes no time fighting back. He responds with truth in every case. He responds with fact, and the truth that he responds with is directly related to the specific temptation that he’s facing at the time.

And so, in closing then, I want to commend this example of Christ to you as a divinely inspired pattern for what it looks like to take your feelings captive to what you know is true on a daily basis.

And so how do you proceed from here?
What does it look like to proceed from here on? And this is something that I would recommend, for you and for myself. Next time that you have some time alone with the Lord, take a few minutes to examine your spiritual armor. Look for chinks—look for holes in your armor.

And what I mean by that is, what are the areas where the devil always seems to attack you? And for most Christians, you know right offhand there are a few areas where the devil always seems to attack you. Because it seems like, with every Christian, there are always specific areas, and it’s different for most people, but it’s always those areas for that person.

Figure out what those areas are for you. Do you struggle with feelings related to doubt, fear, worry, lust, pride, depression, defeat, anger, bitterness, jealousy? Are you repeatedly feeling like you’re still condemned, even as a Christian? Do you feel like God’s ashamed of you, or that He doesn’t really love you? Do you feel like God is not really with you? He might be with other people, but He’s not with you.

Again, what are the specific areas that you find yourself constantly being attacked in with regards to your feelings? Figure that out.

Once you have that figured out, the next step is to find specific verses or portions of hymns or good quotes or whatever that relate directly to those specific areas of weakness in your life.

Again, that’s what Jesus did. You see specific truths directed to these specific temptations that He was facing. So you have this feeling that God’s not with me:

• Matthew 28: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
• Hebrews 13: “He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.’”

You feel condemned before God:

• Romans 8: “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
• “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns?”

You feel like God doesn’t love you:

• Jeremiah 31: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with loving kindness.”
• Romans 5: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

You feel like God is ashamed of you:

• Romans 10: “For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame.'”
• Hebrews 2: “He is not ashamed to call them brethren.”
• Hebrews 11: “God is not ashamed to be called their God.”

So if you’re struggling with something, and maybe this is the case, maybe you’re struggling with something and you don’t know where to turn, you don’t know where to go, well, then ask somebody. Humble yourself and ask someone.

And don’t just say, You know, I’m really struggling. I mean, get specific about it. Because just saying, I’m really struggling, is not going to help you. Again, specific, specific.

“I really struggle with thoughts and feelings of depression and suicide. Can you give me some verses that would help me fight these things? Can you give me something? Give me some truth. Give me something to lay hold of.” Humble yourself and ask for help from others.

Will it be easy? No. Will it be humiliating? Probably. But it’s worth it to get the help that you need.

And then, once you have verses or quotes or whatever, write them down on something that you can carry with you throughout the day. And when those feelings start creeping in, lay hold of the truth. Lay hold of the facts. Don’t just be passive about it, but actively place your faith and trust in what God says is true.

It’s like the hymn writer says:
I do believe, I will believe. I will take God’s side against my feelings.

Let God be true, though every feeling in my mortal body says otherwise.

“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame…” You see, the best feelings. “…I dare not trust the best feelings in the world, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. Not lean partly on Jesus and partly on my feelings—wholly lean on Jesus’ name. When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace.”

You see, the feelings aren’t there. So what do I do? I rest on His unchanging grace. I rest in fact—that’s the fact. Place your faith in the facts. Your feelings are not the standard of truth.

And that’s what God is working in His children: to start transforming our minds, just like Charles has been talking about here in Romans 12:2. To transform our minds to see that His facts, His truth, are reality.

Feelings and all of these things do not determine reality. That’s what the world, the flesh, and the devil want us to think. No. It’s God’s Word that’s the standard of truth.

So get it before your eyes. Believe it. Walk by faith, not by feelings, no matter how persuasive, how strong the feelings might seem to be.

If your feelings contradict Scripture, it’s your feelings that are wrong, not the other way around. And you’ve got to settle that, beloved. You have to settle that.

Take those things captive to what you know is true.

Fact, faith, feeling.

And I like that. It’s an old, old way of saying things, but I think it’s helpful, and it’s easy to remember: fact, faith, feelings.

Facts first, faith in the facts, feelings follow along. And to walk in that mode is life and joy and peace. And to reverse that mode is bondage.

And for a good one-verse summary—it’s kind of the main point here—think of Jesus there in the upper room in John 14 with those disciples:
John 14:1: “Do not let your heart be troubled.”

Translation: Don’t trust in your feelings. But what?
“Believe in God. Believe also in Me.”

Don’t let your feelings reign. Keep the eye of faith fixed on Me.

Well, that’s all I have.